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Thought I’d post a quick show report for WonderCon and our “R2 Droid Building Basics” panel.

I’m just about recovered after a real busy few weeks. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it was just the event, but I had a droid to finish which meant lots of late nights – but isn’t that always the way.

Luckily the day of the event went pretty smooth. With some help of some friends who showed up early to help us unload, Gerard and I were in and setup by 8:30am. Doors opened to the public at 9am, and the fun started. We spent the morning zipping around the convention entertaining the crowds.

We didn’t have a booth or anything as there’s too few of us to run it, but we were luckily to have access to the 501st break room to store our gear and charge our batteries.

People love the R2’s and were surprised to see one, then realized there were two of them running around.

I think Leia couldn’t decide which one to send on the secret mission!

The first glitch in our plan was the carpets – for some reason our droids didn’t like them at all. At C4 I didn’t have any issue with any of the floors, carpeted or not, but at WonderCon it seemed to sap our batteries really quickly. We’re both using JAG drive systems and NPC motors, and were getting around 60-90 minutes of runtime on about 21Ah worth of batteries. Compared to C4, my droid is a little heavier, but only by 20lbs, and I was getting closer to 3 hours off of the same battery system. [edit – see the following post for the diagnoses/fix]

My stand by set of batteries also had a problem which made me late for the Rebel Legion photo shoot, but Gerard made it.

At 1pm we started to get ready for our panel. People were already lying up outside anxious to get a seat – which surprised me. Turn out was great, with about 80 people in attendance and lots of questions were asked. Don made a brief appearance at the end too which was great.

Our panelists of local builders were –

Gerard Fajardo
Ryan Goff
Chinh Nguyen-Duc
David Calkins
Chris James

Panel Description –

R2-D2 Droid Building Basics – Come meet local builders who will share their experiences and demonstrate working droids. Topics range from materials, tools needed, basic electronics and radio control information to make your own R2 come to life! This panel sponsored by the R2 Builders Club.

Thanks to Andy S for his slide deck which ours was based on. If anyone would like a copy of ours please let me know.

We did try and head into the dealer room in the afternoon, but it was way to busy and again the carpet was slowing us down. So we opted to stay closer to the main entrance on the tile floor. On the way out we did come across Doctor Who and a Dalek who was fascinated by our domed friends.

My photos from the event are here, and my favorite has got to be this one